Nick Denton probably has deep pockets. Motorola probably has top-notch lawyers.
The people who disagree with each other in this Fark thread are never going to convince each other of anything. "You are not your bank account." Oh. Well that settles it. Might as well end the discussion.
There's a geek-off within this Slashdot thread about the relative merits of electrical tape versus sending a lock command through the serial port. The former is obvious enough but it works only until Gizmodo decides it would be amusing to peel the tape back and repeat step 1.
I want a clinic inside my local Walgreens'.
The use case is pretty obvious, especially this time of year: The sore throat that won't go away. The twisted ankle on ice, by someone who sort of understands first aid but can never remember when you ice something versus when you heat it.
I think one of these four options is miles ahead of the other three; your mileage may vary:
1. Make a doctor's appointment, see your primary physician a week from now
2. Go to Emergency Room, wait six hours
3. Go to Urgent Care clinic, pay $100
4. Go to CVS, wait five minutes, pay... $5? $10?
"Allowing retailers to make money off of sick people is wrong."
That sounds so noble, yet it's so catastrophically misguided. Replace "sick people" with "children" or "education" or "poor people" or heaven only knows what else.
Kucinich has asked for a New Hampshire recount. I know he's not asking strictly on his own behalf, but I still immediately thought of an Edna Krabapple quote:
"One for Martin. Two for Martin! Would you like another recount?"
"No."
"Well, I just want to make sure. One for Martin. Two for Martin!"
We've learned so far in 2008 that we're not 13-year-old girls (nor the flounciest gay men imaginable). We're not 19-year-old girls who long to be out of college (nor 40-something women who long to be 19). We're not pretentious stoners (who don't seem to realize that Mary Louise Parker's character is as dumb as a post).
There's a very good chance we're senior citizens. I'm actually quite eager for a second season's worth of research on this.
National polling data. Democrats: Clinton, Obama in dead heat. GOP: Huckabee, then Giuliani and McCain knotted up, then Thompson then Romney.
More word on the Indiana photo ID case. Helpful hint: If you want to establish your bona fides as an Indiana resident, whipping out your Florida driver's license isn't the way to go.
Interesting Tim Cavanaugh piece on Ron Paul. I couldn't read a word of the all-cap first comment.
Texas Monthly reported on Paul's atrocious newsletters six years ago.
The series premiere of Ugly Betty and the music video for Metallica's "One" have almost nothing in common -- except that they're things that in the past 24 hours I couldn't quite make it through.
(Getting the former out of the way: Zany fashion folk! Zanier Latinos! Kind-hearted girl caught in the middle (who apparently doesn't know what constitute work clothes). Oh, will she ever catch a break? The two main demographics for this show should get together and compare their taste in men.)
The video for "One" delayed my acquired taste for Metallica by at least five years. But despite what I'd remembered, the problem wasn't horror/gore/squickiness -- it was an outright political thing for me. I realized this when that hangdog guy with the mustache tells his son ("Dad, what is democracy?") that democracy must be when young men kill each other.
Yes, Lars, et al, that's exactly what democracy is all about. It's precisely why all these people who didn't have the good fortune to be born in one were risking their lives to get (e.g.) past the Berlin Wall.
Who needs freedom anyway? (And most of all, as we learned ten years later, heaven f'n forbid anyone try to steal Metallica's intellectual property.)
My outrage was palpable -- but not so palpable that I didn't thoroughly enjoy finding a live performance of "Master of Puppets."
Dear Susan B. Anthony et al.,
I realize (at least I hope) that most women would find this thought process appalling, perhaps nauseating. On the other hand, demographers tell us that many of the women who'd be most appalled by this are in the Huckabee camp.
A Missouri town wants to ban swearing in bars.
The font revolution: Remember when typeface design could only involve printing presses? I don't either.
Some genetically modified rice might slow down global warming.
That kid who got himself killed by a tiger was buried in a Raider jersey.
Best comment in the thread: Rob Iracane
Worst comment in the thread: The painfully unfunny, obvious one. (With a sentiment that I agree with, but as message board threads go the thought itself is, like, so two weeks ago.) I'd like to think if this were real-time conversation, that one would lead to two seconds of awkward silence, then a right back where everyone left off.
The next time a Democratic party insider raises a stink about the electoral college, or any other issue with a "one person one vote" premise, I hope someone remembers to call them out about "superdelegates."
(It's their party, they can choose their nominee however they want to. Smoke-filled room for all I care. I just find it ironic, given the parties' reputations, that 20% of Democratic convention delegates are unelected VIPs. Any given Republican has distinctly more say about his party's presidential nominee than any given Democrat.)
Speaking of RealClearPolitics links, here's why a crowded GOP field gives Mike Huckabee a big advantage. Sent to me by the biggest erstwhile Ron Paul supporter I know. (I don't actually know that he's shirked Paul, but he's the kind of guy who'd quickly disavow all the racist newsletter stuff mentioned in that TNR story. Long Islanders aren't typically into racism/anti-Semitism that I know of.)
Here's a post from NR about just how inaccurate the polls were before the N.H. voting. No mention of the Bradley Effect, even though Mickey Kaus came very close to predicting this. (He didn't actually predict it: "I'm as flummoxed as everyone else, having gone along with the near-universal consensus that Obama would win." But it was the natural consequence of his Iowa analysis.)
Slate published an off-the-wall Christopher Hitchens piece about Obama (off-the-wall even by Hitch standards). Despite the headline, nobody I knew had any sort of obsession with Obama's race (then again, none of NY Times theater critic Pauline Kael's friends voted for Nixon.) So I was already predisposed to reject Hitch's premise, and must admit I stopped reading at "And why is a man with a white mother considered to be 'black,' anyway?"
Speaking of Slate, John Dickerson says HRC won by making herself more available to NH voters. Emily Bazelon says she won because of identity politics (that's not what she calls it -- she calls it "The XX Factor" -- but that's what it is).
I wasn't a Ron Paul acolyte, but I knew at least one. This kind of gloating is just unbecoming. (Day By Day is still making Norman Hsu references? What kind of shelf life is that?)
Photo ID requirements for voters: The case for. The case against. I find the latter article singularly unconvincing: "In the entire history of Indiana, the total number of reported instances of [in-person impersonation] fraud is zero" Yet around the country, votes are routinely cast in the name of dead people still on the polls -- and dead people are in no position to report this.
I don't know about you, but I've always been dumbfounded by the idea that you can just walk in, claim to be any given person, and vote, no questions asked. (More precisely I'm dumbfounded that at least in California, precincts find it worth the trouble to announce this policy so conspicuously.)
But then, I'm also dumbfounded by precincts that use any voting system other than those optical scan cards. It pains me when posts like this use an oversimplified dichotomy between machine counts and hand counts. (Optical scan ballots are counted by machine, but exist as/on paper such that any recount can be easily done by hand.)
You may remember a few months ago I planned to "Join Rudy." Aside from his interesting delegate strategy (which I actually do like), it's hard to take a candidate seriously whose staff is incompetent enough to let this happen.
(Someone else, maybe on the Reason blog, mentioned that he was cratering anyway because his TV ads were so unpopular.)
My theory is that he was a plant. That shows you how low an opinion I have these days of the people running the campaign that he heckled.
The Democratic returns in New Hampshire so far aren't quite what pollsters expected. A few theories are plausible:
1. People were actually sympathetic to {"Iron My Shirt" + crying jag}. I would mourn for the world if so.
2. Bradley Effect (plus Iowa's "reverse Bradley Effect," as suggested by Mickey Kaus)
Neither of those is fun to contemplate, though the former is much more horrifying to me.
My first thought, on reading this guy's account of Rose Parade volunteering, was "shouldn't they find a way to outsource this?"
My second: Why pay some guy in India 25 cents an hour when they can get this chump to do this absolutely free?
My third: He spent hours doing what? Heaven forbid he spend the same amount of time at a battered women's shelter, in a classroom, in a hospital, or on any of dozens of other projects that much more directly make the world a better place. "Tediously beautiful," indeed.
(To be sure, there are a lot of things I spend hours doing that could have been much more nobly spent on the aforementioned charity work. But I'm very clear-eyed about that being my own time. If you're going to blow a huge chunk of hours doing something so unpleasant in its own right, why on Earth would you let the greater good be something so lame?)
Ron Paul: This is pretty damning.
Mitt Romney: Re Jason's comment to the post below, I wouldn't deride Romney as squishy so much as phony. My intuition is that the candidates who pander and posture the most turn into the presidents who are least effective in foreign policy situations. On the other hand, Bill Clinton was about as phony as they come, yet (aside from what you think of any given ideology or policy chose) he was just keeping-it-in-his-pants away from being a fine executive.
John McCain: Kaus is still tearing apart his immigration plan, seemingly deservedly. McCain is wrong about immigration now; he was wrong about steroids in baseball a couple years ago (more specifically he was wrong about whether it's worth Congress's time); and most of all he was utterly wrong about campaign finance reform. He also gets an astonishing amount of free passes from the mainstream press, and above all he's a cranky old fart.
In presidential politics I have a surprising soft spot for cranky old farts (c.f. Bob Dole), so long as they're not ideological kooks. I think it's just that my worst-case scenario for McCain is significantly more benign than for any other candidate.
(Obviously a lot of people would strongly disagree with McCain's foreign policy, or mine, or my opinion of his, etc.)
I ought to say something about Thompson, Giuliani, Huckabee, or a Democrat. But it looks like Obama has things well in hand; I've already opined about Huckabee; and it's odd to think of Thompson as a nominee since I can't picture him taking first place in any given primary/caucus. (He'd be at best a brokered convention candidate.) I like the gamble Giuliani took with his campaign strategy (concede Iowa & NH, focus on big-delegate states) but he needs to be sure people don't forget he exists (without also being a jackass).
Conventional wisdom seems to be that Obama and McCain will win New Hampshire. Seems right to me.
Every time I read about McCain on the campaign trail I like him that much more. (Except when he's belligerent about something he's also dead wrong about, which comes up now and then.)
HRC getting all teary: Move on, nothing to see. Avert your eyes if necessary.
There's a blatantly obvious choice for Obama's running mate, should he go on to win the nomination. It's so obvious that I just now checked to confirm that the 22nd amendment wouldn't preclude it. (No, nobody currently running for president, nor married to same.) I also checked various URLs that, predictably, are already taken and parked.
Is it strange that Ron Paul is the GOP candidate about whom I have the least strong opinion either way? The six viable Republican candidates include three whom I like, two whom I dearly hope don't get the nomination (Huckabee, Romney*), and then Paul. He combines so many things that I strongly like or strongly dislike, but they all get canceled out -- and he'd get slaughtered in November (about which I'm surprisingly apathetic).
*- Romney had a golden opportunity to be exactly who I'd most fervently support. But I hate 90% of how he runs his campaign, including that he's somehow managed to be both a stereotypical politician and a stereotypical Republican. Aside from military heroics**, Romney is the candidate whose pre-political career impresses me most. On paper all he had to do was be himself, yet apparently someone told him to do just the opposite and he was too weak a person to resist.
**- refers specifically to McCain, and what he went through as a POW. It's an apples to oranges comparison, though. And honestly, I'm not so impressed by what (if anything) McCain did after being a pilot but before holding office.
Really? David Beckham?
I'd have been dead certain it was George W. Bush. In fact, I'm still not entirely convinced it isn't.
Beckham's is still pretty flagrant.
I learned this from Wikipedia just now; for all I know you learned it on TV today.
What did the college careers of LaDainian Tomlinson, Byron Leftwich, and Ben Roethlisberger have in common?
At least two of my high school classmates have joined the Facebook group "If Mike Huckabee Wins I Will Leave the Country." A bit premature, no?
Meanwhile, it occurred to me: You know which major cultural figure I'd be least surprised to see endorse Huckabee (excluding people already associated with the GOP or religious/political activism)? Gregg Easterbrook. You know it's coming. He'll make some thinly veiled references in his football column.
If his next TMQ has five paragraphs touting a national sales tax (instead of income tax), you heard it here first. If his next column has five paragraphs attacking high CEO salaries... it will be just like 2/3 of his columns anyway.
He probably won't attack abortion or homosexuality, but then I'd have expected his critique of Jews in Hollywood to be a lot less clumsy.
...until they greatly improve (at least de-suck) their ads.
Incidentally, it does me no end of amusement that the line "Can I afford this?" in iPhone ads is keyed to a visual of Google's stock history.
Fantasy football final results: 2nd of 10, 3rd of 12, 5th of 10, missed the (6-team) playoffs in a 14-team league. Carson Palmer, Chad Johnson, and Randy Moss played well enough Week 17 denied me the cheap ESPN prize schwag.
One "Salary Cap Football" league: Did terribly.
Leading a 32-team league in college football pick 'em; will win that league unless Bowling Green beats Tulsa and LSU beats Ohio State.
Informal playoff picks (winner only - spread is irrelevant) I was the only one of our quartet to pick NYG over TB. (One went with all favorites, the other two went all home teams.) Eli is still a work in progress.
Contrary to the second part of the post below this one, the state of Illinois is uniquely unqualified to handle any act of law enforcement that involves data processing.